Gunning for Mitch

A conservative advocacy group is targeting Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell with a series of online ads in his home state for helping to negotiate the fiscal cliff deal.

“It’s a statement we’re making and I suspect there will be more statements that are going to be coming out,” said Brent Bozell, president of ForAmerica, which is pushing the ads. “It is a statement to make it emphatically clear that what the minority leader did was 100 percent unacceptable. Conservatives are going to hold him responsible for this.”

The ads read, “Mitch McConnell: Whose side are you on?” with the image of a morose McConnell wedged between pictures of a smiling Vice President Joe Biden and smirking President Barack Obama.
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McConnell is up for reelection in 2014 and is hoping to fend off a conservative primary challenger.
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“When Republicans agree to do what they did agree to do, then they are just as much tax-and-spend Democrats as Democrats are,” Bozell said.

“Do I have any confidence that Republicans will stand by [McConnell’s] statements a couple of days ago that the talk about tax increases are over? None,” Bozell said. “It is a fluid situation. There are some serious battles coming up. I’m not writing off anything. If Republicans find their mojo and rediscovered their soul and try to do the right thing, we’ll support them, but they just can’t count on us anymore.”

Who knows if this is serious? But McConnell could very well end up with a Tea Party challenger. Remember now Senator Rand Paul’s primary election night speech?

I have a message. A message from the Tea Party. A message that is loud and clear and does not mince words: We’ve come to take our government back.

Everyone says the Tea Party is dying. But it was never really alive. It was the wingnut zombie reanimated after the ignominious failure of their Dear Leader George W. Bush. They never really go away. And Kentucky is a place where they might just be able to get the job done. Rand Paul won his primary against McConnell’s handpicked candidate.

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About Digby

Digby is the pseudonym of blogger Heather Parton from Santa Monica, California, who founded the blog Hullabaloo. The once-anonymous blogger became public when she accepted the 2007 Paul Wellstone Citizen Leadership Award from the Campaign for America's Future on behalf of the progressive blogosphere.